This blog is a great opportunity to share ideas about ways to
transform schooling as we know it, to help all students realise their
talents, passions and dreams. Be great to hear from anyone out there! Feel free to add a comment to Bruce's Blog and enter e-mail to receive postings

‘…
the latest neuroscience and psychological research suggests most people, unless
they are cognitively impaired, can reach standards of performance associated in
school with the gifted and talented. However, they must be taught the right
attitudes and approaches to their learning and develop the attributes of high
performers – curiosity, persistence and hard work, for example – an approach
Eyre calls “high performance learning”. Critically, they need the right support
in developing those approaches at home as well as at school.’

‘In
short, building relationships between how to solve a problem and why it's
solved that way helps students use what they already know to solve new problems
that they face. Students with a truly conceptual understanding can see how
methods emerged from multiple interconnected ideas; their relationship to the
solution goes deeper than rote drilling.’

'Kagan’s
analysis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) concludes that it
is more of an invented condition rather than a serious illness. Moreover, he
thinks that the pharmaceutical industries andpsychiatrists have invented the
disorder because of money-making reasons.’

‘And
also their ability to engage in cardinal reasoning i.e. knowing that the number
three — when you see it on a page or hear someone say “three” — that it means
exactly three, which is really at the root of our ability to count. This
cardinality, in particular, seems to be the most important skill that we can
measure at a very young age and then predict whether kids are going to be
succeeding in a much broader assessment of math achievement when they enter
kindergarten.’

‘So
in fact, getting kids to read will not only improve their reading, it will make
them like reading more. Getting children to like reading more in order to
prompt more reading is not our only option. We can reverse it—get them reading
more, and that will improve reading attitudes and reading self-concept. Well
then, how do we prompt a child with negative or indifferent attitudes toward
reading to pick up a book?’

‘We
need to ensure that the spaces for creative writing and creative learning are
not squeezed out

of formal education and that the inspiration of Harry Potter
and friends can continue to provide the means for young (and not so young
people) to become immersed in real/non-real, familiar/strange and magical
worlds that can become the gateway to new forms of creating understanding,
being and becoming.’

‘I
was surprised by the release of the draft digital technologies curriculum
content (DTCC) a few weeks ago. Actually, I should say blind-sided. It
wasn’t that a digital focus was coming to our curriculum that shocked me (it is
well overdue), but rather the rigidity and narrowness of the document. I
believe the DTCC has completely missed the point of education, and the place
and purpose of digital technologies.’

‘However,
when the day is done, students often are reluctant to leave. They cluster about
in the hall or linger in the classroom asking questions, voicing concerns, just
relieved that there’s someone there they can talk to. And that’s reason enough
for me to stay. The odds are stacked against me. Help isn’t coming from any
corner of our society. But sometimes despite all of that, I’m actually able to
get things done. Everyday it seems I help students understand something they
never knew before. I’ve become accustomed to that look of wonder, the aha
moment. And I helped it happen!’

‘What
happens when you take a child from her sandbox — where she has learned to get
dirty, play, laugh, and see the world with wide, curious eyes —to lock her into
a “regime of fear” where the new Gods are efficiency and optimization?

‘There are teachers who will read this and think I am
wrong. They have heard the drum-beat of data-driven education since they
first decided to become teachers, and they – like me, a few years back – still
believe that the data is meant for them.

It isn’t. Data is destroying education, and we need to stop it
before it is too late.’

‘Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs “childish”
thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids’ big dreams
deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups’ willingness to
learn from children as much as to teach.She also notes that “childish” is often
associated, dismissively, with irrational thinking – but says in some cases we
can, and do, truly benefit from irrationality.’

‘David
Perkin’s point is that formal learning rarely gives students a chance to learn
to 'play a whole game'. All too often learning by teaching isolated 'elements'
first or students are required to 'learn about' things because of distant
future need. In both cases ( one resulting in a 'piecemeal' curriculum the
other lacking personal relevance) students struggle to see the point of
learning. Perkins contrasts this 'mindlessness' to learning a new game. Education
, Perkins writes, 'aims to help people learn what they cannot pick as they go
along' unlike, he say, learning ones first language.’

‘Claxton’s
message was that by focusing on developing students 'learning power' ( NZs 'key
competencies') teachers and their students will cope the standards without too
much anxiety. As Claxton quoted, 'Are we preparing our students for a life of
tests or the tests of life?'We need , he said, 'To provide our students with
the emotional and cognitive resources to become the 'confident, connected, life
long learners'; the vision of the NZ Curriculum. To achieve this is all about
powerful pedagogy.’